"
"2284 miles later…
Ξ March 19th, 2008 | → | ∇ General |
…plus 119 hrs 55 mins precisely and 1 respiratory infection.
[OK, quick-release venting first. This is 17 hrs’ worth of being PO’ed. Just skim down to the intarwubs bit.]
Re: driving, once we got north of Tennessee, I noticed that the drivers got A) much more polite, and B) rule-abiding. As in, they all understood the rules of the road. I never got shit-boxed, blocked in the passing lane, etc. And people would put on the blinker, pip, pip, and change. No indecision, or stupid non-cruise control speed irregularities.
…And of course on the return leg, as the weather got warmer, the assclowns came out again in force, as though yesterday’s cold front and tornado drove ‘em underground and they had to consequently make up for it today. Grand prize had to go to this girl in a red Jetta, who successfully shit-boxed me for 20 minutes at speeds between 65 and 75.
All I wanted this trip was to stay on cruise control at 75. No obscene violations of posted limits. No crazy driving. But apparently even that was too much for those accursed East Texans and Arkansans.
Re: the scenery, well… The bits from Houston to Texarkana, thence to Little Rock and Memphis — are all reasons for me to not like small-town USA. Some of those places look like they’ve been left behind since the ’70s. I feel bad; don’t know what sort of “revitalization initiative” it would take to get ‘em going again.
Things got better once we hit Illinois.
Part of me seriously wonders how things would’ve been different had I been working. As it was, I managed some half-hearted work — checked in with my various job sites (UH career site, HotJobs, Monster, BP, Chevron, Jobing.com, etc.) a couple times over the weekend. Sent my resume off to some contacts I’ve made in the past two weeks.
Thank goodness for the intarwubs.
But the rest of the weekend was spent rediscovering commonalities with my sisters and cousins. We stopped by the hospital every day to visit our grandfather. He was as curmudgeonly as usual, but cheerfully so, b/c (we figure) he really was glad to see everyone. My mother and aunts pulled shifts staying with him.
It’s a tragedy of a lesser order that we so often put forth our greatest efforts to spend quality time together, just when the clock is running out. In the past, our extended family has gone for years at times without seeing each other.
Otherwise, we ended up with an inadvertent Spring Break holiday. One of my cousins took us to the Museum of Contemporary Art. But parking was ridiculously full up, expensive, or both, so we aborted and walked up and down Broadway for a little while. Lots of fun little Chicago stores and shops. We hit this used bookstore called Booklegger’s. Found some awesome cookbooks. Thu dithered about picking up one on Russian, Polish, and (as it turned out) lots of other Eastern European dishes. So I snagged it plus two others (one all-Italian).
It was really cold, so we went home. My cousin Vien Tri, my sisters, and I all decided to try one of the recipes. So then we ran out to the store for groceries and ingredients, and spent the evening making bread pudding together. Later, when everyone was home, we had some Chicago deep dish pizzas for dinner and the bread pudding for afters.
On Monday, we went to Chinatown. Had dim sum with Chieu and her BF Cuong, who’re both pretty cool. Took lots of pictures. Picked up a few small things as souvenirs for Thi and Dan, who couldn’t make it. Ornamental chopsticks, jade zodiac critters, etc. On our way home, we stopped by the hospital and delivered some dim sum to Ong Ngoai.
That night, our uncle (in-law) took everyone out for Persian kabobs. Food was pretty good. A little on the dry side but very tasty.
We ended up watching Children of Men at Chieu’s place. Really liked it.
I also got the chance to see AVP 2: Requiem this weekend. Some interesting bits, but pretty uninspired overall. During one of the predator-alien fight scenes, I found myself wondering what time it was, and whether I could get in a chapter of Mosier’s deconstruction of the Nazi military-industrial complex before bedtime.
And the best part of the weekend, I think, was that everyone in general, and Ong Ngoai in particular, got lots of family quality time.
